In his last week in the office he has held for 40 years, Frank Minyard was thinking of a few last errands. For one, he needed a black suit. “I got to go buy a new suit,” he said. “That’s one of the things I’d like to do.”

Though Minyard has been the coroner of Orleans Parish for 40 years – a bureaucratic border-guard on the crossing to death – he has never owned a funereal black suit and in many other aspects, has never dressed the part of a coroner. Not a gaunt, unsmiling man who views the living as future paper work, Minyard is a pot-bellied warhorse who pairs alligator boots with tuxedos, dons all-white to play the trumpet, and on a morning during his last week at the office, wore cowboy boots and called himself a “simple country doctor.”

On the eve of his retirement (his last day is Monday, May 5), Minyard may be ready to slow down and bow to convention. “I’m going to more funerals in the past two years,” he said. “All of my contributors are dead. The people who have funded and helped me are dead. I got to go buy a new suit.”

Minyard’s retirement marks the end of an era of New Orleans – whose voters have elected him 10 times since 1973. A case study in New Orleans character, Minyard’s wild storytelling and endless eccentricities entranced voters while prickling his critics – watchdogs who say his underfunded office routinely classified the deaths of those who had been in police custody as accidental or natural; that as a trained gynecologist, he was not qualified to oversee pathologists’ rulings on 1,500 autopsies a year; and that as a politician, he failed to push for better technology for an office that has petered out under his reign. Now, the New Orleans Forensic Center cowers in a low-ceilinged former funeral parlor in Central City, where fly-strips keep bugs away. Three refrigerated trucks sit out back, keepers of the city’s unclaimed dead waiting for pick-up or a potters field.

To all that criticism, Minyard says the coroner’s office is the city’s last scapegoat and the last place to get a handout. “So here I am, the Lone Ranger taking the brunt of all bad things people are saying.”

He says it smiling, almost like he likes it out here, all alone.

A boy in the 9th Ward

Raised near the intersection of Piety and Burgundy Streets in the 9th Ward, Minyard put himself through school “carrying bananas on the riverfront,” as he recalled. His father was a bookmaker and his mother played piano at silent movie houses.

As a child, he was interested in death. He would walk through St. Louis Cemetery after it rained, he said, to see the bones loosened by the shifting muds. But socially, he embodied death’s opposite: He was a loud and lively talker, discovered by the manager of a New York tourist boat for his booming voice and employed the next day as the ship’s announcer.

Back in New Orleans, Minyard took up playing the trumpet, befriending Pete Fountain and Al Hirt while professionally buckling down. A licensed gynecologist with a splashing house and a wife and children, he began to divert time from his practice to a smattering of public volunteer efforts. He threw a charity fashion show, presenting Saints players in “men’s attire”; ministered free medicine to an abbey of nuns on Chef Menteur Highway; and gradually becoming immersed in what he saw as the biggest health problem facing the city: drug addiction.

At a converted schoolhouse in the Treme, he and one nun – Sister Mary David -- founded a clinic to deliver methadone to heroin addicts. It was a new treatment, and mis-understood by the guards at Orleans Parish Prison who would turn nuns away when they sought to give imprisoned clients a dose, he said. When Minyard raised hell with the guards, he was told to talk to the man in charge, the city coroner. “I almost had never heard that word – coroner,” he said. He knew it had something to do with death; it was who you called when you failed a patient. “I knew it meant something bad but I wasn’t exactly sure what. I thought it was someone off in the sky.”

A meeting with coroner Carl H. Rabin ended in no understanding. So Minyard pledged to steal Rabin’s office.

At the next election, he lost – blaming his low votes on being too “innocent of politics” and of not understanding what the people wanted from a coroner. His ads showed him stiff and unsmiling: a Dr. Death.

Instead, he labeled himself “Dr. Jazz” and campaigned in only two locations to hit every voter: barrooms and churches, a practice he holds to this day. “In the bar, I get the trumpet out and get on the bar and play ‘Saints.’ In church, ‘What a friend I have in Jesus.’” It worked. Minyard won in 1973 and nine times after. “I think the trumpet does more to get me elected than my background in medicine, or my experience.”

Bumper stickers and bandstanding

A coroner is required to classify all questioned deaths, public deaths, and unknown deaths in New Orleans; to oversee health care and deaths in the prisons; to commit the mentally unstable to institutions and to minister to the city’s victims of rape – a practiced Minyard has since outsourced to nurses at LSU. But he used the role as a platform for health issues and political change far beyond the office’s role, especially in his early and most energetic years in office.

In his first term, Minyard instituted a drug-testing program for newly admitted prison inmates; drafted a law regulating safety measures for Carnival floats; called for a police rape squad with female officers; and spoke out for gun control after the shooting of a 19-year-old girl named Melba Augustine.

“I believe we’re the only civilized country in the world that doesn’t have gun control laws,” Minyard told The Times-Picayune in 1975. “This is not going to win me any friends … but I believe in this.”

Minyard was called, by The Times-Picayune in 1976 the “most outspoken coroner the Crescent City ever had.” He sent tongue-in-cheek press releases such as the one urging drunk drivers to join him in a “quiet room” he would hold for their arrival. His pink bumper stickers littered New Orleans like confetti, asking, “Have you hugged a child today?” – part of his campaign against child abuse.

Named to a Times-Picayune “best-dressed list,” Minyard found himself cast in films (as the coroner in “Murder at Mardi Gras”) and playing trumpet in a band that included a one-armed man, his mother on piano, and 11-year-old Harry Connick Jr. – a rag-tag bunch arrested once on the 600 block of Royal Street in 1974 for disturbing the peace, a memory that Minyard still delights in.

Ahead of the 1978 election, Minyard was so popular he even considered running for Mayor, finally bowing out at a lunch meeting at the Fairmont Hotel in New Orleans with fellow contender, Ernest “Dutch” Morial.

In defining the position of coroner as a public spectacle, Minyard does what New Orleans has always loved to do – put death above-ground and on the front page, splash it across the masks at our festivals and in the rasping sounds of our wake-up calls on Mardi Gras morning.

But Minyard’s public persona also served a public health purpose, said Michael Baden, a former New York medical examiner who worked with Minyard over the years, including after Hurricane Katrina when he came to weigh in on deaths at Memorial Hospital. “He expanded the coroner job,” Baden said. “It’s not only for dead people but also for living people. … Every patient has a relative and what’s important … is to be able to speak to the families, the next of kin, the loved ones. You deal with dead people and deal with live people at the same time.”

Even Mary Howell, a civil rights attorney who has questioned the findings of Minyard’s department, credited his energy when he first took office. “He was passionate and outspoken about the amount of violence in the community and the human cost of that … particularly about the horrific death toll of African-American male youth and characterized it as a form of genocide,” Howell recalled. “But all that was years ago.”

For so many, death is an answerless question. And Minyard was there to loudly answer it. But somewhere along the way, Minyard quieted. His reluctance to fight for funding for his office – and for new technology – let his practice slip, said Alvaro Hunt, Minyard’s former chief pathologist who retired in 2012. “When he first got elected there was a lot of optimism when the office was going to do well. But if you look at the whole 40-year period, the practice of pathology has advanced,” Hunt said. “The office just never able to keep up with developments.”

In the late 1970s, Minyard was at the forefront of new practices – aggressively pushing for a law that would pronounce patients dead when their brain died, he said, which when it passed allowed the state to have organ transplants. To this day, he sees that as his highest achievement and recalled with fondness how, all over the city, doctors reluctant to be sued for unplugging a patient from a breathing apparatus would call him. “I was running all over the city, unplugging people.”

But since the 1980s, something cooled. Even Minyard admits as much; “When I was younger I was much more aggressive with things.” On the wall across from his desk hangs a placard, quoting Calvin Coolidge in a gothic font:

“Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.

Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.

Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.

Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.

Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.”

Minyard says he is leaving the quote behind for Jeffrey Rouse, the candidate he endorsed after he bowed out of seeking another re-election, who will take his job over. “He’s full of so-called stuff and vinegar,” Minyard said. “He’s 39-years-old.”

Minyard’s barnacles

The work of Minyard’s office was back in court this month as a judge heard the case of Kerry Washington, an inmate who died at Orleans Parish Prison. Minyard signed off on an examination that said the patient, who was found covered in contusions, had not died as a result of prison action but as a result of “cardiac arythmia,” "respiratory insufficiency," "excited delirium," and "death during restraint." An expert hired by Washington’s family testified that the pattern on Washington’s body was consistent with restraints tied so tightly they may have caused Washington’s blood vessels to burst.

The Washington case may fit a string of cases where autopsies endorsed by Minyard appeared to side with law enforcement’s version of events. “The fundamental question dealing with the in-custody deaths – the deep suspicion in the community was that the coroner’s office was not doing objective findings and things were being slanted to protect law enforcement,” said Mary Howell, who has questioned Minyard’s department’s findings in court. “When we did second autopsies we made pretty shocking discoveries of things not properly documented or properly disclosed. This is not just supposition, it’s a very serious problem.”

Minyard's chief pathologist was named in a case in which a woman, Cayne Miceli, was found dead in custody in 2009 and initially ruled by the coroner to have suffered a drug overdose. A second autopsy revealed her lungs had been filled with fluid – pointing to signs that the asthmatic woman had been denied medication. The marks on her arms cited as drug-related were the evidence of IVs when doctors had attempted to resuscitate her. After the case was filed, Minyard changed the cause of death to bronchial asthma.

Cases in which Minyard’s office appeared to side with law enforcement agencies go far back, and have not all been fought as publicly. As early as 1977, Minyard ruled that a 19-year-old man who died on Mardi Gras after some said he was beaten by a police officer, was dead because of a skull fracture he had received hours before his arrest. However, Minyard told The Times-Picayune that “he had no idea what caused Smith’s fracture or when he received it.” In 1986, Minyard said a man who died five hours after being arrested by police on a shoplifting charge had died due to sickle-cell anemia, a long-term blood disorder. The victim’s family disagreed.

Minyard shrugs off suggestions of a pattern. “A lot of times the true forensic evidence of what goes on in this particular case is not in line with what it looks like. If we say it’s not that – it’s something else that’s not so bad, we are held to the fire,” Minyard said. “I cannot change the ruling. … Just because the public opinion doesn’t agree with that diagnosis. We have no ulterior motives.”

Baden, who has testified contrary to the findings of Minyard’s office, said Minyard may have a bias toward law enforcement, as other examiners have tended to. “There’s a problem with coroners and medical examiners in this country. We’re always working with police and we trust the police when we’re investigating a death case. We ask what did the police do in investigating it, and usually they’re very reliable and impartial,” he said. “There is a tendency, in my opinion, for there to be a bias for police when people die in police custody.”

Minyard’s great social persona – his allegiance to the living – may have skewed him toward that bias. He says “Harry” and “Charlie” to refer to former New Orleans District Attorney Harry Connick and former Orleans Parish Sheriff Charles Foti. “I am friends with Sheriff Foti and Harry Connick. I’m friends with police chiefs,” Minyard said. But that doesn’t mean he is biased, he said. “We are not the witnesses for cops, DA’s offices. We are a separate entity. We are all separate and can check on each other.”

Writer Dan Baum, whose book “Nine Lives” portrayed Minyard’s life through Hurricane Katrina, said that Minyard was the most emotionally invested public official he had ever met. “Frank Minyard has made some mistakes in his career, no question about it,” Baum said. “But I’ve been a reporter since 1981 and I can’t recall another public official I’ve ever met who is as emotionally invested in the people he is serving as Frank Minyard. Say what you will of Frank Minyard, say what you will about his off-duty flamboyance or the mistakes he’s made … for me what rises above all this is that Frank Minyard loves the people of New Orleans.”

Hunt, Minyard’s former chief pathologist, said that those who say the office has a bias look to only a very small number of cases. “If you do 1,000 cases in a year and one or two turn out to be a problem with – those are the two cases that say ‘Oh, man, look at the terrible work you’re doing,’” Hunt said. “All the brouhaha, all the noise, everything that arose – the three to four cases -- has been entirely blown out of proportion.” He said that in all controversial cases, supplemental reports were made to correct errors.

Frank Minyard’s rate of ending up the subject of a controversy – especially regarding the deaths in custody -- is consistent with a 40-year career, said Brobson Lutz, a former city health director. “You can’t survive 40 years of politics in Louisiana without having some barnacles on you like a pirogue, that little canoe that they use in the bayous. … You keep a pirogue in the bayou for 40 years it’s going to have some barnacles on it and it’s the same with a politician.”

The ship’s announcer

Minyard’s office has acquired some enormous and very public barnacles. In 1998, he was accused of selling body parts and bones without the permission of victims’ families – fodder for a political attack ad that depicted Minyard as a mad scientist. In 2011 a young murder victim was mistakenly cremated – taking him from his family a heartbreaking second time.

But most New Orleanians will best remember Minyard’s office as it acted through Hurricane Katrina, when Minyard loudly took the job of ship announcer as the city floated by, a river of corpses. A regular commentator on the horror, his voice was broadcast world-wide while in a string of temporary offices, Minyard’s crew attempted to identify the thousands of bodies – many of which had been decomposing for a week before reaching the autopsy table.

Of all challenges Minyard saw during Katrina, he said he was especially rattled by having to classify deaths of those who died at Memorial Hospital, people state investigators say were victims of euthanasia. “That was a real low point in life,” Minyard said. He waffled on his decision – were these murders? – even taking a personal meeting with the doctor accused of administering the lethal doses. Eventually, Minyard ruled the majority of cases “undetermined,” and a grand jury did not indict.

“The biggest problem with those patients – they were very sick people before they went through with this ordeal,” Minyard said. The cause of death was also difficult to determine due to levels of decomposition, recalled James Traylor, a pathologist who performed autopsies on the Memorial patients under Minyard. “All these bodies are badly decomposed. All you can get is quantitative analysis, not qualitative analysis,” Traylor said.

The horrifying case that has followed Minyard even further – and will indeed, follow him as he walks out the door – is his ruling on the death of Henry Glover. Shot by a police officer, Glover’s body was burned in the backseat of a car by other officers. Minyard’s office ruled that the cause of Glover’s death was undetermined. Minyard said that was because pathologists failed to find evidence of a bullet’s path in the “bag of bones” delivered to them. With scant evidence, he was reluctant to classify Glover’s death a homicide – even though his reluctance may have deferred state action.

When called upon by the victim’s family to re-investigate the death, Minyard initially agreed and then rescinded – waffling again, until deciding he could not re-investigate, as there was no new evidence past what he had initially reviewed. “Until further evidence is brought to the office, the classification will not be looked at,” Minyard said. “As much as people want us to make a case out of it, we can’t. That was my last hurdle. I feel good about that. I did the best we could.”

King at the bottom

Somehow despite the scandals, Minyard has been elected and elected and elected – and it must be due to more than his trumpet playing. When questioned on an autopsy, Minyard’s first statement is to defer the blame elsewhere, on the pathologists who determine cause of deaths. As he is not a trained forensic pathologist, he has had to rely on the findings of those below him. That can be a problem, said Hunt. “The only thing Dr. Minyard could do was depend on somebody else.”

And so Minyard sought to keep the trust of those who worked for him. In return, they worked hard for him, said Traylor, the pathologist. “Minyard was in office for forty years because he was adept at surrounding himself with people who are adept and qualified,” Traylor said. “He’s just an administrative person.”

Which begs the question – why has he been necessary? Why has he not been booted out of office?

In a twist of logic – a major criticism inveighed against Minyard may have kept him in office, Lutz said. Because he has not fought as hard as critics say he should have to upgrade his office and obtain city funds, why would anyone want to work there? “Nobody else with any political muscle is going to be interested in that office,” Lutz said.

Minyard has been king of the office at the bottom of the heap, Traylor said. “The coroner’s office deals with all the scourge no one wants to talk about -- murders rapes insanity,” Traylor said. “It still needs to be funded, needs to be seen.”

And someday maybe it will be. The new office that Minyard has called for since 1975, his second year on the job, will come during Rouse’s term in what he guessed was a year and a half. “I am disappointed,” Minyard said. “I’m not going to get a new office until I get out of office.”

He laughed, at his own pun.

Instead, Minyard will retire to the countryside, to his farm in Folsom where he keeps cattle. There, he can finally be the “country doctor” he sees himself as. And he may finally settle down.

Newly married, he met his wife at age 77 and wed at 80. The wedding was held at the abbey on Chef Menteur Highway -- where he has been volunteering as a doctor to the nuns since the 1960s. In return, they sang for him – a choir of 30. “It was beautiful,” Minyard said.

For catering, they served Lucky Dogs.

A field littered with skeletons

So why did Minyard not retire earlier? “To begin with – retirement scared me. I’m petrified,” Minyard said, hesitantly, after taking a long sip of coffee. “After Monday at noon, I won’t be needed anymore. Retirement is a ghost town without need. It’s a place old people go to die in a field littered with skeletons. I have been searching for a way to keep that away from me.”

He pushed his hands out into the air, like death and uselessness was a thing you could push off from, a medical answer you could find, a piece of paperwork to sign off on. But death is not a thing. It is a finality. And the coroner is as afraid as any of us.

“I can’t say I have never thought about death, considering the work I’ve been doing for 40 years,” Minyard said. “But I can tell you this – I haven’t lingered in my thinking about death. I am thinking about my own death a little more than before. The word ‘death’ is a final thing and it’s something I don’t like. So I don’t think about it. I know it comes to everyone.”

--Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that lawyer Mary Howell had named Minyard in a suit filed by the family of Cayne Miceli. In fact, the lawyer Glenn Cater named Minyard's chief pathologist, Paul McGarry in the suit.

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